But, before going any further, it's important to understand that
accidental plant poisoning is very unusual and only very rarely do
people suffer serious harm. Death from accidental ingestion of a
poisonous plant, in its natural state, is exceptionally unusual.

I'm John Robertson and I've spent over ten years researching,
writing and talking about poisonous plants.

As well as running this website and
publishing a book about the questions most often asked about
poisonous plants, I give
talks about aspects of the subject.

Most visitors to this site are looking for information about a
specific plant. The menu on the right will take you straight to a
plant's page.

It cannot be said too often that poisonous plants cause far less
harm than might be expected. In 'Accidental poisoning deaths in
British children 1958-77' published by the British Medical
Journal, Neil C Fraser reports on a total of 598 poisoning
deaths of children under 10 years of age. In the period covered
only three deaths were attributed to plants.
Even this low
number is overstated since one death was due to fungi and in one
of the other two 'the role of ingestion in the child's demise is
doubtful'. Thus there may have been only one confirmed plant
death, with 'hemlock' being the plant responsible, in twenty
years. Fraser's analysis makes it clear that medication,
household cleaning materials and cosmetics pose a much higher
risk than poison plants.

The number of cases of accidental plant poisoning is so small
that very few countries trouble to keep any sort of detail track
of incidents. In 1996, however, a paper appeared giving detailed
information for Switzerland. Though it would be wrong to suggest
that the results are entirely typical of the whole world, they
do give an idea of how small the problem of accidental plant
poisoning really is.
More
detail from the Swiss paper is available here.

But, this is plants in their natural state. It is when products
are made from them that the trouble starts. Deliberate consumption
of legal intoxicants like alcohol and tobacco cause many millions
of deaths every year. Far more than those caused by the use of
substances made illegal because of claimed dangers of using
them.

Also of great concern are the 'natural' remedies which people take
not knowing that they contain deadly poison.
Plants in the Aristolochia genus, probably, cause more deaths
than any other plant.